I don’t know about you but with another year around the sun I can start to feel my birthday blues approaching. It is going to be a “milestone” birthday and I will be the first to admit that I have good years and bad years when it comes to my day of birth!
What do I mean when I say good years and bad years?! Well sometimes I’m really excited for my birthday and want to celebrate. Other years I have panic attacks the days leading up to and including my birthday. I’ve denied how old I am for a number of years (cough cough I’m 29… again) and I get sad/depressed. Ten years ago, I had a complete meltdown, cried, thought I was “old” and just utterly felt lost. For a number of reasons, none having to do with my age, it was one of the hardest years of my life.
So as the countdown begins to my birthday it caused me to do a little thinking, and some research into why I get like this. And drumroll please… ANXIETY!! Ahh anxiety… cue “Hello darkness, my old friend!”.
What Causes the Birthday Blues?
So here are a few reason why we get anxious… our mortality, we are afraid of getting old and death. We question if we are important to people and worry “will they remember it’s MY birthday”, this leads to negative internal conversations which usually go something like; “if they don’t remember, does that mean they don’t really like/care about me?!”, no, people are busy and forget dates often. Other reasons we freak out are heightened expectations, feelings of lack of accomplishments, social pressures, “milestone” birthdays, social media and overall less excitement as we get older.
6 Tips to Cope With Birthday Blues…
1. Lower your expectations
If you build something up in your head and it doesn’t go exactly as planned you will feel disappointed and focus on what didn’t go right versus what you did do and what went well. Humans are negative and we focus on the negative, especially when we have one idea in our head and it does not happen. So lower your expectations, less is more!
2. Reflect on your accomplishments from the past year
Write down the things you have done this year. They can be big or small, if you remember them they count and mean something to you!
3. Beat birthday blues by imagining the future
Write a list of 5-10 things you want to accomplish this year, personally, and professionally. Once you have written them down you can start planning out what steps you will take to accomplish these goals! To figure out what steps you need to take, trying using SMART goals,, because they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/relevant and Time-bound.
4. Let people know you want to celebrate (if you do)
Your friends and family can meet your needs if you do not tell them!! They are not mind readers, so they won’t know if you want to do something or not unless you speak up. Also, it is annoying when people start to ask you what you want to do and you’re like “IDK”, but we all know we have some idea about what we do or don’t want to do for our birthdays!!
5. Do something fun/special for yourself & be easy with yourself.
Take the day off, get a mani/pedi, treat yourself to breakfast, buy the flowers, etc. Don’t wait for others to plan something, or suggest something! Speak up!! It is your birthday after all, and it’s a great day to be nice to yourself and to treat yourself!
6. Diversify your feed
Thankfully we live in an age where more people form all different walks of life are online. There are even pro-aging influencers. Imagine how you want your life to be like when you are 60, 70 or 80 years old. Follow people who are that age who you admire (and not because of how they look!). This can help you remember that your life is absolutely still worth living as you age. I love Lyn Slater and her book, “How to be Old.”
Remember, there are a lot of people who feel the birthday blues. You are not alone. But it is up to you to cherish it and spend your birthday however you want, with whomever you want! Also, don’t forget age is just a number, you’re as young as you feel on any given day!!
Gabrielle is Therapy for Women’s Clinical Director and specializes in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, health anxiety, and OCD. To learn more about Gabrielle, read her bio here.
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Thank you! Just went through the bday roller coaster and experienced a variety of anxieties (as well as some great fun too)!
The “29 again” comment made me laugh because same! Glad I’m not the only one who has panic attacks before birthdays.
Thank you so much for writing this! I’ve been dreading my 40th next month and couldn’t figure out why I felt so anxious about it. The part about heightened expectations really hit home – I think I’ve been building up this idea in my head of what turning 40 “should” look like and it’s been stressing me out. I love the tip about lowering expectations and just doing something special for myself instead of waiting for others to plan the perfect day. Also really appreciate the reminder that it’s okay to tell people what you want instead of playing the “I don’t know” game when they ask. Definitely going to try the reflection exercise and write down my accomplishments from this past year. Sometimes we forget how much we’ve actually done! Saving this post to reread when the birthday anxiety kicks in.